Matt and Elena - Tenth Date: On Wickery Pond, L.J. Smith [best ereader under 100 .TXT] 📗

Iʼm not even sure we made it
right.”
“It held!” Elena flared.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, as if saying “there, there.” He took a swig of
cocoa-nectar. “It held. Well, it was so long ago, but I guess . . .” He
paused. He felt his own eyes go round. “It was . . . it was . . .”
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“I knew it!” Elena cried, clapping her hands. Two big tears ran
down her cheeks. Then almost like some strange prayer: “Uncle Joe! It
was Uncle Joe!”
This time Matt didnʼt need a kick in the behind to know what to do.
He took the slim, weeping girl in his arms, and he felt the warmth of the
fire-heated blankets around her.
“Youʼre not warmed up yet,” he said, almost accusingly.
“I stayed by the pond to watch them bring you in,” she murmured.
Damn fool, Matt thought, but there was a lump in his throat as he
thought it. Anyway, it was a good excuse to hold her closer.
“Hey, somebody drove my car over to here,” he discovered, seeing
the Junk Heap flashing in the firelight.
“Some girls brought it just a few minutes ago,” a tall man, who was
just a pair of legs standing away from the firelight said. “You shouldnʼt go
around leaving it with the keys in the ignition.”
“No,” Elena agreed, letting Matt hold her softness as hard as he
wanted. And then, “Our coats were in that car.”
“And here they are,” announced a seductive feminine voice. “Safe
and sound at last.” A tall and feline girl with a mane of tousled bronze hair
knelt to wrap Elenaʼs fur-trimmed coat around her.
“Caroline,” Elena murmured. “Thank you.”
“And yours, sir,” Another tall girl, this one with dark hair and eyes.
“Uh—Meredith,” Matt said, instantly tongue-tied.
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She smiled at him. “Weʼre just sorry we didnʼt hear about what
happened sooner,” she said.
A small feminine figure, seeming even smaller by comparison to the
long elegant legs of the first two girls, threw herself bodily on Elena.
“Ooooh, God! I thought you were lost forever,” she sobbed,
strawberry hair blazing in the firelight.
“Oh, Bonnie!”
“Actually, they called to say theyʼd pulled you out about a minute
after they called to say you were in,” said Meredith.
“But the agony I suffered in that minute,” Bonnie said in an injured
voice. “Or has velociraptor sisterhood just collapsed?”
“Of course not,” Elena said, displacing Matt to comfort her. And
eerily, with no visible signal, four voices rose in the darkness.
“Velociraptor sisterhood! You bite us; we bite you back!”
“All Iʼm worried about,” Matt said snuggling deeper into his coat is:
“is what happened to my wallet?”
“Oh, yeah, we found it,” Caroline said carelessly. “It was empty,
though.”
For a moment, Matt felt a terrible pang. Then he saw that Elena
was smiling at him.
“Maybe Uncle Joe went off on some new adventure,” she said.
“Yeah.” He did his best to smile back and managed it pretty well. It
did seem . . . well, kind of too bad for somebody who would think it was
just money, and not realize it might be something more. But he couldnʼt
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honestly complain. He had his life, he was out of the water, and he had
Elena Gilbert, too—for a while still, anyway. Elena was notably a rover.
“But Elena, your dress,” Bonnie wailed, almost wringing her hands,
going from the humanitarian to the cosmopolitan in seconds. “Itʼs—done
for.”
“Weʼll have to put it down for its own good,” Meredith agreed, dryly,
not a muscle moving in her lovely olive-skinned face.
“Youʼre definitely a spectacle,” Caroline said, with a certain note of
relish in her voice.
“Itʼs been . . . quite a date,” Elena said softly. “But then, it was our
tenth date anniversary.”
There! That was it. Elena said the words with a slow, dropping
inflection. If you didnʼt know what she really meant by it, you might think it
had been “quite a date” in another way.
But now that Matt knew Elena, he found he didnʼt care. Didnʼt care?
Ye gods, he wished it had been that kind of date, even if everybody,
including his mom, came to know it.
Looking at Elena now, with her coat covering up most of the
damage, she was like a pale and lovely pioneer. She was dressed in her
Sunday best, but ready to go out and pluck a few chickens for dinner. The
cut on her forehead was neatly bandaged, and the sparkle was back in her
lapis lazuli eyes.
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God bless you, Uncle Joe. Thanks for tonight, and have a good trip,
Matt thought. Elena offered her arm, and unhesitatingly Matt took it. Weʼll
hold each other up, he thought.
Just then a small round personage bustled up to him, who always
seemed to Matt to smell of fresh-baked cookies.
“Mom!”
“Matt! I got the news just after Mrs. Sulez, and she brought me
down here—you know what itʼs like with me trying to drive at night—but
the last I heard you were under the water. Oh, Matt, Iʼve been so
worried—and Elena, some kid said it was your idea . . .” Her voice rose a
little, both in volume and in pitch. Matt tried to move in front of Elena. If his
mother said anything to hurt her—
“They said it was you who kept him from drowning,” his mother
finished. “And, all I can say is—”
And then, by some mysterious means of feminine transportation
Elena was in his motherʼs arms, having apparently teleported through him,
and they were both crying.
“This is the girl who saved my Mattʼs life,” his mother announced to
all within earshot—and at the top of his momʼs range, that covered quite a
few ears.
“This girl kept his head above water until rescuers could come and
she didnʼt leave him until he was safe.” she announced. “And I say this
girl is a hero, and anybody who says different, that person can stand up
right now and say it to me!”
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“Mom—ʼʼ Matt groaned softly.
But there was an outbreak of applause, while Elena, blushing
brushing away traces of tears, said, “Well, Matt is the real hero. He got
Lindie—Jacobs, isnʼt it?—out of the water. And Dr. Alpert got him out. All
I did was a little talking.”
And a little kissing, Matt thought luxuriously. So what if I didnʼt
really feel it? Iʼll feel it tomorrow.
And just then as he and Elena stood blushing and beaming near
the fire, one of the tall men, a parent or neighbor, said, “Hey, kid, you
really shouldnʼt be leaving your money in a wallet in an open car. I took it
out and kept it for you. But a credit card and a hundred dollar bill like
that—well, some kid mightʼve been too tempted, get me?”
And with that, he restored Uncle Joe (and Aunt Judithʼs Visa card)
into Mattʼs still-numb hand. He looked up and saw Elena looking at him
with an expression of speculation.
“Looks like Uncle Joe isnʼt through having adventures with you,”
she said finally. “Oh, thatʼs clever,” she added, as she watched Matt
automatically fold up the bill and slide it into the hidden compartment.
Thatʼs right, Matt thought. I did that before once before, too, on our
first date, when that old man at the restaurant found it. That time, I could
understand how it could fall out; I was fiddling around with it. But this
time—how could the tall guy know where the hidden compartment was . . .?
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He looked around for the man, whom he had registered as a pair of
legs, but couldnʼt see him. And anyway, there was suddenly a tumult at
the other side of the bonfire.
Caroline appeared beside them, bursting with feline excitement.
“Bonnieʼs gone and fainted for real. She said she saw a ghost disappear.
And then she went . . .” Caroline put a hand to her forehead, palm up,
staggered back like Hamlet, and then made as if to swoon forward. “If
Meredith hadnʼt caught her sheʼd have fallen in the fire.”
“Well, for heavenʼs sake, go get her some water to drink—in a sippy
cup, too, or sheʼll spill it all over. Tesha—youʼre still Tesha, right? Go run
to Dr. Alpert. Make sure she knows thereʼs a girl whoʼs fainted. And,
Matt”—she paused, looking at him where he stood warming by the fire—
“just one question—did you ever see pictures of your Uncle Joe when he
was a younger man?”
“No,” Matt admitted. “I guess we werenʼt a very picture taking
family. I only saw him when he was dying.”
“I see,” Elena said, slowly. “so itʼs perfectly possible that . . .”
“That what?” but Elena didnʼt answer. Because she knew he knew
what she would say.
“Oh, well,” she said turning her back on the bonfire to toast her
other side. “Weʼll think of it as good luck, shall we?” She held up her
sippy cup of cocoa toward him. “Hereʼs to lots and lots more adventures!”
There was only one thing to say to that, and Matt said it. After the
first word, Elena joined in, ignoring the stares of bystanders.
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“Bubala bubala
Bubala bubala
Bubala bubala BUM!” Imprint

Publication Date: 11-08-2010

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
To all of my Siblings